


True Names

by dreamsofghostsandstars



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Between Seasons/Series, Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, Canon Compliant, Canon Het Relationship, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Demon Blood, Demon/Human Relationships, F/M, Knifeplay, Morally Ambiguous Character, POV Ruby (Supernatural), POV Third Person Limited, Psychic Sam Winchester, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Rough Sex, Ruby (Supernatural)-centric, Sam Winchester on Demon Blood, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Sex in a Car, Some Plot, Witch Ruby (Supernatural), demon religion, religious zealot Ruby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2020-12-13 18:21:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21002111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsofghostsandstars/pseuds/dreamsofghostsandstars
Summary: While Sam and Ruby hunt a network of demons, Ruby hunts for the Sam she needs. Set between the flashbacks in "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and Dean's resurrection in "Lazarus Rising."





	1. Chapter 1

She still hasn’t told Sam Winchester her human name.

It’s not like there’s any reason why she should tell him. She’s not sure when she quit being Isota, if it was the moment Brynstan renamed her or if it took the fire a couple of centuries to burn it out of her, but it was a long, long time ago, both by Earth’s time and Hell’s. Isota has as much to do with Ruby as the newborn Sam that was in 1983 has to do with the demon-blooded hero she’s training today. Even if those first months of his childhood aren’t _him_, didn’t make him the potential destroyer and messiah she knows and loves, they are _his_, and she wonders how they affected the parts of him that don’t matter to Heaven or Hell or destiny. Was he happy? Did he sense, on any level, Mary worrying over her deal with Azazel? What was his first word?

Ruby may spend a lot of time gambling with her life, but she knows better than to overplay her hand. She and Sam each have their priorities, and bonding over ancient history doesn’t rank. She’ll drop the name _Isota_ around the time he hands her an album of baby pictures. She can imagine that, actually— some morning spent lounging around in bed, in the paradise that Lucifer will give them, flipping through low-def glossies and trying to make out faded crayon scrawls. It’s stupid, because not only is it unlikely to happen, she knows she wouldn’t enjoy it if it did. She’d put up with it for all of three seconds, tops, before she hurled the album against the wall and asked him how he felt about blood for breakfast.

Speaking of blood… “Hey, Sam, not that I want to cramp your sense of style, but I’m not sure Nowhere, America’s ready for butcher’s chic.”

Sam looks up from where he’s feeling the pulse of a catatonic former host; the angle and his expression make him look small, even though he’s still taking up half the floor. He rubs a hand hard across his mouth, even though he hasn’t fed from her since they left the motel and his face is clean; most of the blood comes from that black-magic altar he’d gotten thrown into, fighting the good fight. Puritan guilt doesn’t make blood any more or less sticky. They’d shown up too late to save the sacrifices but in time to save the demon’s host, and that’s one more person who’s alive because Sam used his powers, the way he was destined. Battered, delirious, and with her grandkids’ guts on her apron, but alive. Ruby guesses she can spin it later. She’s worked with less.

They can’t call the 911 responders here yet, because Sam won’t let the wizened old lady take the fall for what the demon did if he can help it, and they can’t just walk out the door with her, because it’s the middle of the day and there’s too much blood. They can’t leave Granny here to figure things out by herself, either, or the whole keeping-her-alive thing’ll get blotted out real fast. They need to clean up their mess, and they need to do it yesterday.

Ruby’s had more experience cleaning up murder scenes, so she works on that while Sam keeps track of Granny’s pulse and eyes. She carries the tiny corpse reverently out of its grandmother’s sight, then mangles it over a spread-out garbage bag until the ritual aspect of the murder becomes less clear. The baby goes back to the altar room; the garbage bag goes into another one, along with the plaid overshirt that Sam shoves her way, the ritual knife, and as much of the other paraphernalia as she can find. Sam’s already telling Granny to say she woke up from a blow to the head and picked up the infant’s body by accident, which is good, because Ruby sure as hell doesn’t have time to coax her into new clothes before they leave. Ruby would’ve tried to wipe up any prints and stray hairs, but suddenly the form of the old woman’s shock changes and she’s screaming at the top of her lungs. Sam goes ahead and calls 911 from the old landline, only bothering to give the address before he goes for the long-jump gold with his first step back toward the window they came in through.

The iPod comes on automatically when Sam cranks up the car. Some band called Maroon 5, according to the screen, but it could’ve been anything. Considering Dean’s rigid taste in music, Sam’s is remarkably eclectic: She’s heard everything from Beethoven to Beyoncé Knowles, who apparently is calling herself Sasha something now, in this car. And all of it, even the oldest Purcell piece that they played on NPR, is young compared to her. Sam is practically an infant.

“This is good, who is it?” she asks, even though she knows, because she needs Sam to believe that he’s more than just a tool to her. It’s true, but not so true that she doesn’t have to worry about it.

_“Good?!_ What—.” He realizes that she’s talking about the music. His hand’s shaking so hard that he misses the iPod’s off button, and he winds up yanking it out of the dock instead._“Really,_ Ruby? That demon gutted a baby, an old woman is probably going to prison for something she didn’t do because we didn’t get there in time, and we have no idea why they did it, and you want to talk about our favorite bands?”

She thinks about pointing out that all of the demon’s deeds would still have happened, no matter what she wanted to talk about now, but she bites it down. It’s her own fault for not knowing how distraught Sam would be after what he no doubt perceived as a terrible failure. Frankly, she deserves worse than a Winchester tongue-lashing. She’s supposed to be good at the human thing, it’s her greatest flaw, and what are we if we can’t get those right?

“You want to talk shop? Fine,” she said. “I’ve got nothing. You?”

He stews for a minute before he answers her. “No.”

She sucks on her bottom lip, like she’s thinking over a new idea. “There is something. More like a nothing, but it’s all wrong.”

“Tell me,” he says, and damn, he’s forceful enough in the bedroom, but he’s practically a teddy bear there— a pink plushie teddy bear with sparkles on its nose— compared to how he is on the hunt. The veins in his neck are jumping.

He wants to rip someone apart. She knows the feeling.

“I didn’t recognize the spell,” she says. “Or the demon. I mean, there are a lot of demons trying to work a lot of spells out there, but those ingredients? It’s like someone put the all stuff from a dozen completely-unrelated murder spells in a hat and picked out a few objects at random. Either it’s higher-level magic than I’ve ever seen— and I’ve seen a lot—, or they had no idea what they were doing.”

Ruby’s pretty sure, personally, that it’s the latter. A demon surfing the townsfolk less than three hours’ drive from Sam’s motel, killing babies and black cats, yet unable to throw any magic Sam and Ruby’s way in a fight? That screamed “disposable minion” if anything ever had. The only real question had been whether it was fodder sent by Lilith, or bait in a trap by someone semi-competent and out of Lilith’s loop.

The question _now_ is what happens next. Is Lilith going to keep sending fourth-rate demons out for Sam’s psychic lessons? Does Lilith plan to guide him in any given geographical direction? Is it just about the practice, or is it some kind of mind game, too?

_God_— and she spent way too long in that blonde girl’s head, if that’s her go-to curse—, she hopes she hasn’t missed a message about the plan.

Of course, Sam’s going to figure out he’s being toyed with, whether or not Ruby helps him. As far as she knows, her job is to make sure he still trusts her after. If that makes other demons’ jobs harder, well, they’re sure not doing anything to make hers easier.

Sam seems to calm down a little, the way he usually does when someone gives him something to work with instead of telling him he can’t cut the work. “Okay, so, an experiment or something— but why were they so… obvious? I mean, if they knew it was trial and error, wouldn’t they try to keep it quiet, give themselves more time to figure it out? It’s like they wanted to be found.”

She shrugs, hiding herself in the margins of the truth. “Maybe they did. Those were powerful ingredients. If that spell had worked, who knows what they could’ve done? They could’ve bagged us, gotten a big gold star from Lilith.”

He shakes his head and goes stiff, his eyes slamming shut for a second. He’s getting better, not streaming blood from his nose every time he wields his powers, but he’s still got a ways to go. Given how stoic he is, his head must be hurting like… well, not Hell, because Ruby’s been in Hell and she’s spent a lot of time getting stabbed and shot on Earth, and she knows which is worse. Like a knife twisting in his skull topside, maybe.

“Hey,” she tells him. “You did good today. You saved that woman’s life. Probably a lot of lives, because unless someone stopped them? That demon was going to keep trying until they got it right. I know you hate to lose, but you can’t give up on yourself. Not when you’re so close.”

“I’m not close!” he snarls. “This blood on me? It’s from a baby. And I barely exorcized one little demon that you didn’t even recognize.” He paused. “I’m not ready, Ruby. I’m the only weapon we’ve got, and I’m shooting blanks.”

“No, you aren’t. Sam, there is no one else on Earth who could’ve done what you did. No one. You’ve only been trying to use your powers for, what, a month and a half? If you keep going at this rate, then yeah, you are close. We’re talking months before you’re ready to take the fight to the biggest, baddest demon who ever lived. You’re not shooting blanks, Sam. You’re the Manhattan Project.”

She’s not sure he’ll like the comparison. Her research has included, among many, _many_ other things, an overheated eleventh-grade essay arguing that Harry Truman should’ve been charged with war crimes. But he what he likes matters less than what he needs, and right now, he needs somebody to make him see himself for what he is. No gilding, no shame.

He drives silently for a while. “We need to get rid of the bag,” he says at last. There’s no baiting or accusation in his voice: He just wants to do what needs doing, and he’s cutting her in on it.

Ruby’s chest loosens a little. She hadn’t realized it was so tense. You’d think being an immortal cloud of black smoke would put you above those concerns.

“There’s nothing special about the knife, at least not that I can see without a spell,” she says. “I’ll throw it out later. I think we can just pick an empty field and set the rest of it on fire.” She looks out the window at the passing scenery, acres of stunted cotton broken up by empty pastures and residential lots that might or might not be abandoned. They’ve still seen more people in the last half a day that she saw in her entire life as a human. It’s weird, how _full_ the modern world is even in places that nobody wants, and she suspects that this isn’t far from the middle of nowhere for Sam. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. He makes a turn onto the next little half-paved road that intersects with this one. “We need to get a little more lost first. Tell me if you see a spot that looks good. Loose dirt, if we’re lucky— everything looks like tinder.” She knows he’s thinking about how to smother the fire before they leave it, because he’s responsible that way, and he doesn’t look ready to pick up a shovel, let alone cut through a bunch of roots.

Maybe she should let him suffer through it. Maybe, if it hurts enough, he’ll start drinking enough blood to really unlock his strength, instead of just enough to keep him upright for a few minutes of battle. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for being the kind of sketchy ancient power that a guy wants to have around.

“Don’t worry about it, Sam,” she says. “Demon strength, remember? I can handle this.” She pointedly glances backward. “Tell me you at least brought a shovel.”

He makes an almost-laugh and doesn’t bother answering. He’s still half-hunter; it’s a wonder he can walk into a library without dragging a shovel behind him.

Sam doesn’t stay in the Impala when she goes to burn their trash, even though his legs tremble and she checks their distance to make sure his head won’t end up in the fire if he falls. Maybe it’s a funeral thing for him, an apology for not being on time, for not being perfect for absolutely everyone he thinks needs him. If so, he doesn’t comment on her adding a couple of fast-food wrappers to the pile.

It’s hot outside, fire or no, but his teeth are chattering like it’s below zero and his eyes are streaming in the plastic-tinged stink and his nosebleed’s caught up with him, just a thin dribble slowly working its way toward his lip. He smears it flat with the back of his hand, and staggers when he puts his hand back down, like the motion’s enough to overbalance him. When she catches him, he wraps an arm around her and doesn’t let go.

He clings to her until the shirt is ash and the knife is black and the bag is a hardening puddle. She’d help ease him to the ground before she scatters dirt over the embers, but he refuses to sit down. She gets that, as stupid as it is: It’s hard to swallow your pride, to be weaker than you think you should, to be cut off from your true self.

_Someday_, she thinks of Sam, _Someday, you’ll find out who you really are. And I’m going to be there when it happens. I’ll be there to help you carry your cross, and I’ll be there when you fall from it, and no matter what you think of me, no matter what you think we are together, I’ll be there to watch you rise._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruby discovers an unexpected motive behind the traps set for her and Sam.

Ruby refuses to let either of them get in the motel bed until she’s strewed it with pennyroyal, because hunter motels are lousy in the literal sense, and apparently no one’s bothered to come up with a better lice repellant in the over half a millennium since her human life. You’d think that any profession where crabs are an occupational hazard would be beneath Lilith’s right hand and the Anti-Christ, but no, their side can’t catch even that much of a break. _Witches are whores._

Sam lifts a sprig to the light. If the bitter scent bothers him, it doesn’t show. He likes her bitter, too.

“I’ve never used this stuff,” he says. “Purification rituals, right?”

She shrugs. “More like controlled corruption, but it looks like purification if you have the bigger liver. Think salt in reverse. A lot of things, if they work in one time or on one plane of existence, you can make them work on another. But this is just what it looks like, herbs from a hippie store. Not real magic, at least not by 21st-century standards. I wouldn’t count on it hurting anything bigger than a tick.”

“Can you use it against demons?” he asks. Of course that’s what he asks.

“Not that I’ve ever heard of. Maybe some witch somewhere knows how to turn it around on us, but poison isn’t exactly anathema to our natures. It’d be a waste of energy, when you could just burn sage. Not that any herb’ll help you against a demon on Lilith’s level. That stuff’s for the grunts.” She peels off her jeans. “I’m gonna go shower, get ready for bed.”

Ruby’s never gotten quite used to plastic toothbrushes. They feel like polyester or lead pipes, some weird fad that humans ought to leave behind sooner rather than later. If she had her way, she’d be using the fibers from a twig of willow or oak to brush this body’s teeth. But her role this season is as a wannabe-normal girl, and she’s gotten this far by playing it even when no one was watching, so she’s gotten used to hitting all the highlights of modern American hygiene: Shiny white bristles covered in fake-minty goop; dental floss that won’t break down until it melts in a supernova; shower with soap that smells like petroleum byproducts.

One thing she can say about Sam, he’s efficient. He’s hooked up his laptop to an extension cord and started typing in search terms by the time Ruby spits out her toothpaste.

“Ruby?” he calls. “I’ve got a lead.”

She wipes her face and steps back into the bedroom. “A lead on Lilith?”

“Maybe. Definitely a lead on a demon. It’s a case just like the one down in Mississippi. Um, infanticide, weird altar, ingredients that don’t make sense together. Boone County, Nebraska: A twenty-nine-year-old woman named Clara Simpson was arrested for killing her ten-month-old daughter. She called police to her house to report the death, came to the door covered in blood, and, according to the officer on the scene, she had a table was covered with items including cats’ skulls, dolls and frogs stabbed with pins, kitchen herbs, candles, and dirt.”

“Graveyard dirt,” Ruby guesses. “But still, that collection doesn’t make any sense. I mean, either you use a poppet or you use a frog, you don’t use both in the same spell.”

“Yeah. Of course, Ms. Simpson has no recollection of her alleged crimes, or anything else for the past week.” Sam shuts the laptop. “Better get dressed, it’s time to hit the road.”

“Now?” Ruby asks. “Sam, you’ve been up for close to twenty hours, it’s nine p.m., and the demon has clearly already smoked out. You need to get some rest, recharge your batteries.” She holds the soft skin of her inner arm to him. “You need to build up your strength. The demon could be anywhere.”

“What? No. I told you, I’ll only do it when I need to. You’re right about the demon, it’s could be three states away by now, and I won’t have anything to fight. I’ll just be asking questions.” He can’t quite change his gaze from her veins. “I don’t need it.”

“Okay,” she declares, crawling over him to the other side of the bed and pushing back the covers. “You say so. I just hope you’re right about when you need it. Can I go take my shower now, or are do we have to go running headlong into this non-emergency you’re expecting to find?”

Sam makes a tiny sound that she’s learned to recognize as him facing reason. “Yeah. Okay. We’re too late this time, and we’re in this for the long haul. I’ll look for omens. Maybe we can actually get ahead of this thing. Things. What are the chances that it’s the same demon from before?”

“Low,” Ruby says. She grabs the floss out of her duffel and talks between its uses. “They’d need some freaky luck and decent power to get out of Hell that fast. Chances are, these are both minions working for the same boss.”

“Lilith?”

“Directly? I doubt it. Lilith has a pretty tight circle.” Not even a circle, when it comes to the important stuff, but Ruby can hardly tell Sam about her other life as Lilith’s single most trusted agent and confidante. “Trust me, if it was one of her buddies, we wouldn’t be wondering what that spell was for. These are nobodies with big ideas.”

“Then maybe we should focus on the boss,” Sam says. “If they’re sending out their followers to try the magic, then they’re probably keeping a low profile, which means we won’t find them at the scene of the crimes.”

“True,” Ruby agrees. “Of course, you know that they’ll be expecting us to figure that out, sooner or later. If we do track them down, chances are it’ll be a trap, and we have no idea how many followers they have working for them, or what kind of magic they’re using.”

“I’d think it was a trap even if they didn’t have a boss,” Sam says. “Magic, or, not-magic, this obvious, they want someone chasing them. Me, another hunter, another demon faction— I don’t know. But I do know that we won’t be the only hunters who notice this. We have to get there before they do.”

It’s amazing, how Sam can be this smart and this stupid at once. How can he see these connections and schemes, and not admit that he needs his full strength to resist them?

Ruby doesn’t say that. Instead, she points out the obvious. “We can do both. Look for omens and go to Nebraska. There could be a clue there: Something left inside the host’s mind, or a reason why the demons are picking these towns.” She hesitates. “Just as long as I get my shower first.”

She yanks the shirt over her head quickly, the better to gauge Sam’s reaction. His shifts only briefly to her breasts before turning back to her inner arms, to the same places he’s drunk from. Only the first time, when Ruby made the cut herself, has he taken it straight from a vein; since then, he’s always made a cut that barely broke the skin, and half-satisfied himself with the kiddie dose that welled up. She keeps offering him the deluxe package anyway, and he keeps barely refusing it.

“What if they’re sending their followers all over to keep us away from the real danger?” Sam asks, as she steps out of her panties. His eyes are hungry, as bottomless as the pit. It’s a good question, though, a sign that he realizes there’s more at stake than one or two deaths a week.

“Then I think we won’t know it until we’re good and trapped,” Ruby says. _And we need our only advantage ready to go,_ she doesn’t have to add. She leaves the bathroom door open when she turns on the shower. She likes the idea of him knowing that there’s nothing in between them but his own inhibitions.

Sam pads into view, about as silently as he can walk, like there’s still some point in being embarrassed about his desires. “You don’t sound scared.”

She thinks she should laugh. It comes out okay, she thinks. “Of course I’m scared, Sam. We could be walking into some deep shit here, and the last time that happened, you left me trussed up in a devil’s trap for Lilith to grab. But things are different now. _You’re_ different.” _Believe it,_ she wills in his direction. “We’re good, aren’t we, Sam? I mean, we look out for each other?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” He looks ashamed. “I’m sorry, you know. I— I should never have gone along with that. The devil’s trap, I mean.”

“Make it up to me next time I need it.” She draws her fingers slowly up her inner thigh. “Or, you could start early, if you want.”

“Um— are you sure?” he asked. “You seemed pretty mad earlier.”

“I’m sure I’m tired of you always pretending you don’t want me. We have each other, Sam, so why can’t we… have each other? _All_ of each other, the blood and the need and all of what we can be, to each other and the world.”

Sam steps back from the door. “N-no,” he stammers. She thinks his hands are starting to shake from the effort of holding back. It’s hard to know how addiction works in someone whose drug opens up abilities that pure humans don’t even have. The last few weeks are the first time in Sam Winchester’s life that he’s had a real chance to be a healthy… whatever he is, and she suspects his body knows it. “Um, no,” he concludes. “You know, I’ll be out here.”

“Sure, Sam,” she calls.

In a few minutes, she’ll have to deal with him again, but first she’ll tend to her body. It calls for all kinds of stupid, petty things, like deciding whether or not the water pressure’s up to washing shampoo out of her hair, and what kind of pubic grooming Sam prefers. The first host she’d grabbed after Cold Oak had had a vertical line of hair that she called a “landing strip,” but the secretary she’d worn right after Dean’s death had just waxed a little from the sides. The current body’s former tenant doesn’t count, since she’d spent the last three months in a coma, not trying to impress anybody. Ruby kind of hates herself for thinking this way, but it’ll be worth it when they save the world from God’s plan. The last whore, that’s what she is, one more sacrifice to raise the downtrodden forever.

One thing at a time. “Working the case,” Sam calls it, and it’s as good a way as any to keep going. She washes off her body with the motel’s tepid water— she decided to hold off on the shampoo— and reaches for her towel.

***

Boone County, Nebraska, doesn’t look any more exciting than Prentiss County, Mississippi. Liquor’s legal, but that just means the locals can’t even get worked up over vice. As far as Ruby knows, there’s no Hell gate or sacred weapon or even haunted burial ground in the area. There was, however, an unexpected two days ago, accompanied by an equally-unexpected die-off of the cattle; combine that with the ritualistic murder, and it’s obvious that someone’s trying to stir the pot. And bait the hook, while Ruby’s using human clichés.

The evidence from the house has already been moved off-site, so it’s off to the police station for Agent Simon Welch and Special Agent Trainee Ruby Darrow. The last names come from famous lawyers, according to Sam, and he picked a fresh first name because he doesn’t want anyone to start making associations between his face and name. After all, his life is easier if he’s still legally dead.

So Agent Welch goes off to interview Clara Simpson, and Agent Darrow pores over the seized evidence. The demons have stepped up their teenagers-dabbling-in-Satanism vibe, incising runes from the Elder Futhark and letters from some ancient Semitic alphabet into the “altar,” seemingly at random, which the sheriff seems to consider the most shocking aspect of the entire crime. “We ain’t never seen such devil worship around here,” he mutters, while Ruby makes sure that she has a picture of every single rune, no matter how senseless the combination seems to be.

It turns out that it isn’t senseless, just useless: Once she jumbles the runes in enough ways, they turn out to form a rough phonetic anagram for _too late again, _over and over. She calls Sam from their motel room in the White Sandhill to tell him about it, and he agrees to meet her there when he’s done looking over Ms. Simpson’s house.

It’s a good thing she gets there first, because they haven’t escaped notice. If it weren’t bad enough that she spots what she’s almost sure are a pair of hunters outside the Sandhill, she senses magic— real magic, not some bad-taste joke— in their room. It’s subtle, either weak or skillfully hidden, but it’s nearby.

She tries to call Sam, so he won’t burst in before she’s found the source, only for her phone to play dead and the lights to flicker. She heads for the door and finds that it won’t open.

The bursting light bulbs and a whiff of sulfur confirm it: She didn’t get here first after all. And whoever did is stronger than her.

“Hello, Ruby,” calls a voice from the bathroom. “Still playing house with little Sammy Winchester?”

“Still haven’t thought of any new material?” she snaps back. “I thought we were old news.”

The demon walks out of the darkness, hand raised. Ruby recognizes her now, in the instant before Saffre slams her against the wall with a glance. Well, Ruby used to know Saffre as a her. The meatsuit doesn’t matter.

Ruby doesn’t know if Saffre still spells and pronounces her name like she used to, or if she’s modernized it to _Sapphire_.They managed to avoid one another topside after Brynstan threw Ruby out of their little coven, and Ruby doesn’t think Saffre’s been back to Hell since she clawed her way out in the first place. Either way, she’s not someone Ruby wants to see again, not before she has the power of the new and unholy trinity behind her. Saffre’s only older than Ruby by a matter of decades, and she’s not that much stronger as a witch or a demon, but, while Ruby never fits in anywhere, Saffre is never alone.

To make matters worse, Saffre doesn’t look surprised that Ruby isn’t bleeding out like a poisoned rat or bursting into flame. That means it isn’t just Ruby’s amulets protecting her. It means that whatever magic Saffre was working when Ruby felt her, it was probably aimed at Sam, who isn’t currently as resistant as Ruby. She’s used to people attacking her to get to Sam; it’s never occurred to her that they would kill Sam to hurt her. Yet she has to admit, Saffre’s not wrong about her methods. Watching Sam die, let alone knowing she’d caused his death, _would_ hurt.

Some part of Ruby thinks this is funny. Here she was, thinking in terms of grand strategies and the messiah’s destiny, and it’s all about a personal grudge over a girlfriend who dumped Ruby hundreds of years ago. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a lesson in it, though, or that she can afford to ignore the threat.

“Why?” Saffre demands. “Why would you do it? _How_ could you help him kill our mistress, and after he already betrayed Azazel?” A human might not see past the already-black eyes, but Ruby sees Saffre’s true face darken. “Or are you just spreading your legs for whoever you think has a drop of power in them, like you never quit being human? Does it make you happy, swilling down the seed of our mother’s murderer?”

If Saffre wants an answer, she’s going to have to let go of her psychic chokehold on Ruby’s throat. Ruby can’t break it herself. She doesn’t think she could smoke out, either, even if she were willing to give up this body. She _should_ be strong enough for that, so there’s probably a backup coven somewhere within an hour’s drive, and it’s no doubt made up of witches or demons not as incompetent or foolhardy as whoever pissed Saffre off enough to get dangled as bait back in Mississippi. Unfortunately, figuring that out doesn’t help her or Sam right now.

She hears a key in the door, above the scratching and the barking of people rushing away from the motel with its breaking glass and dead phones, while the only human who matters is rushing into the danger, like usual. Oh, God, if he can just reach his powers for a few minutes without her blood to help him…

Saffre turns to the sound of the key in the lock, and it distracts her, just a little. Ruby still can’t move away from the wall, can’t even scream, but she manages to stir the air in the room, sending the sulfur stench through the crack as Sam opens the door. At least he’s warned that _something_’s wrong in here.

There’s a split second when he almost charges into the trap. He’s smarter than that. Ruby knows he’s smarter than that. He thinks about doing it anyway, because he hates demons and he craves the kill and, maybe, because he cares what happens to her.

_No,_ she silently begs of him. If he dies here, because of her, she doesn’t know if she’ll turn herself over for the punishment she deserves, or kill herself with her own fucking knife. But she swears to herself, she _swears_, that she will kill Saffre first, for Lucifer and Lilith and Ruby and Sam and the whole future of demonkind that she’s ruined.

It’s almost like Hell-time, the moment she spends waiting to see if all her plans fall apart and all her love is worthless. To an outsider, it might be a half-second, probably less. To her, it’s far longer than the time she spent digging Bobby’s bullet out of her insides, longer than the minutes when she thought Sam might choose to kill her along with his enemies at that police station in Colorado. It’s like a Christian being thrown back in time and not knowing, even when they should have faith, if Herod’s going to find baby Jesus. Which wasn’t an issue in reality— she has it on good authority that Herod was too busy killing his friends—, but making a messiah isn’t just repetition, it’s twisting the past and the present and the power with which God himself imbued a pack of half-truths and lies when he let his prophets and witnesses believe them. And she’s so useless right now, she can’t move—.

As long as it takes him, Sam does make the right choice. He pauses outside the threshold and takes in the situation: Saffre, Ruby, the puff of stinking air that was that tiny bit too strong to be a random air current. His eyes turn, to Saffre, and they’re coronas of rage around a a starving emptiness, like he wants to suck the blackness from her soul and the blood from her veins and the marrow from her fucking cracked bones and he’d still be eager for more. He probably would. Ruby can only hope that his hunger hasn’t yet made him too weak to win.

Puffs of black smoke begin to emerge from Saffre’s mouth, falling and climbing back into their host, rather than sinking into the abyss as they should. Sam is falling farther than the smoke does, sliding a few millimeters at a time to his knees. It’s wrong that Sam, of all people, would take such a submissive posture toward what Ruby knows is his servant by birthright, but she knows it doesn’t mean he’s giving up. He’s giving it his all.

Sam can’t do it. He can’t exorcize Saffre, not without tapping into the blood inside him, and he can’t seem to unscramble that code without the key Ruby gives him. What he can do is tear enough pieces away from Saffre that the older demon can’t maintain her hold on Ruby. Ruby’s _free, _and she rushes at Saffre with her knife aimed squarely for Saffre’s chest.

Saffre smokes out then, just in time for Ruby to shift the knife. If Saffre’s pulling a trick, then she’ll be ready to cut her throat. It isn’t a trick, though: The smoke disappears in a great rushing cloud, and the body collapses in shock. The trouble isn’t over, but it looks like they’ve won this round.

Speaking of bodies in shock, Sam’s wobbling on his knees. Sweat runs down his neck, and a broken blood vessel is blossoming angry pink in his left eye. He gestures clumsily in the direction of the abandoned host.

“Sorry, Sam, it’s triage rules,” Ruby says, doing her best to bundle him protectively in her arms and sliding the handle of Sam’s briefcase over one wrist. It’s a good thing she has demon strength, because the biggest bad who’ll ever walk the Earth is already more than twice her host’s size. “We’re the ones about to be turned into toads.”

Ruby can’t afford to assume that their enemies are any farther away than the parking lot, or that the Impala hasn’t been compromised. She doesn’t have time to search for hex bags and hidden mics, either. Instead, she gathers her powers and lets them explode in an electrical bomb that should melt all the remaining fuses for a hundred feet in every direction. It’s not what you’d call a surgical strike, and it exhausts her psychic abilities for God only knows how long, but she hopes it’ll either shut down or crank up every electronic security and tracking system it hits. Neutral or distraction, they won’t be working for the enemy.

Most of the customers have cleared out, taking their vehicles with them; the strange hunters haven’t. Maybe they’re in the motel still, or maybe Saffre recognized them, too, and had them eliminated already. Regardless, their ancient truck’s open for the taking, and any hex bags planted for other people shouldn’t affect her and Sam.

The truck protests her heavy foot on the gas, but it gets them out of town. County seat or not, Albion doesn’t have that much town to escape. As far as Ruby can tell, there’s no one on their tail.

It doesn’t mean they won’t find themselves face to face with Saffre at any minute.

“You were right,” Sam says, around twenty minutes and thirty-five miles later. He still looks half-dead, but there’s something alive in his voice, the same something she saw in his eyes when he was fighting Saffre. Azazel’s blood, or hers, or just plain Sam without his brother perching on his shoulder, she’ll take it. His eyes fix on her hand. She must’ve sliced it up breaking the truck’s window.

“You were right,” he says again. “I have to be ready all the time. _We_ have to.” He leans forward, the angle putting him close to her blood. “You’re still ready, too?”

“You’re damn right, I’m ready,” she snaps. Now that he’s sort of out of immediate danger, her irritation with him comes back. “You think I want to wind up dead because you’d rather get some gold star from dead”— she hears her voice drop in volume as his dry lips brush, just barely, against the sticky blood, and then his tongue between his lips— “people? Than— actually do this fighting that you’re always talking ab— out?”

Sam’s tongue wipes a trail, cleaning up the blood but filthy with want, along her hand. His breath grazes the moist skin where his tongue’s passed, and though the puffs are hot and humid in the air, her spine shivers like it’s suddenly surrounded with ice water. It’s what a religious experience is supposed to be, and she’ll take this moment in this rattling truck that stinks of excreted sulfur and burning motor oil over any sterile, pious ceremony in some gilded chapel.

She pulls the shrieking, stinking truck to a stop by the empty highway, partly because it’ll give out soon anyway if she doesn’t let it cool off, and partly because she needs to take in this moment, this miracle rewarding her years of faith. Sam’s cleaned the loose blood from her hand, but he’s not ready to stop, and she’s not ready to let him. His tongue pushes insistently at the shallow cuts on her fingers, as if pressing hard enough will open a vein; her skin’s patched with bruises where he tried to suck out the last scent or molecule of blood. When his eyes open, they’re still hollow and hungry, bottomless inside their devouring fire. He will be the perfect vessel for the god of the ruined and the desolate.

Ruby knows, from that one time she made the cut, what it looks like when the cursed and blessed knife opens her up for him. The boot constraining that magic feels unbearable, now. She reaches down, parting the boot by its zipper, and lifts the knife. With her other hand, she tips Sam’s face up to hers.

“Sam,” she says, “Sam.” She hears a strange huskiness in her voice. _Nervous._ Ruby feels nervous. She’s been sliced open hundreds of times, thousands of times, on Earth and in Hell; she’s given her blood to Sam himself a half-dozen times. But it’s been a long time since she’s been wanted like this, genuinely and without shame, by someone who _can_ want all of her flesh and blood and twisted spirit. “Take it,” she says.

She closes her eyes, head back, and waits for icy tendrils to crawl from the cut and shock this body’s spine to life again. Sam’s shifting, seeking mouth is as hot as the wellspring of life, and the cold currents running through her are fluid and frozen and lighter than air, and eternity itself hangs on, exists in, this moment, in them. It’s too much. She wants more. She bends down to kiss his neck while he kisses her pouring vein, and she, too, draws blood, tasting what a mystery feels like when the devil rips it from Heaven’s hands and twists it open to show its heart and guts.

Sam pulls away, leaving her bereft, but it’s just to reach down and pull off her other boot. He peels away her jeans and panties with her socks, then, and lets her drag his pants down to mid-thigh before he fixes her backwards on his lap with her head pinned against the dash.

There’s no point in waiting, for either of them. He’s supposed to take what he wants, it’s his calling in life, and she’s so eager that a fat trail of her sap, drawn out by her undressing, clings to one leg from groin to knee. There’s no obvious consideration in the way he pushes into her, or how he’s still wrenching her bloody arm to her mouth, but the touch of his hand on her head grows lighter as she pushes back, and he lets her stretch out, un-crumpling her pudenda so that they’re accessible to her free hand. He comes, faster than she’s used to— a green light to crush his enemies _really_ does it for him, as it should—, and his hands go to her waist, not keeping her there, just supporting her while she writhes on his half-hard dick. When she climaxes, he whole body spasms so hard that the muscles of her abdomen burn from the strain.

She turns around and kisses him. Her blood’s smeared from his nose to his chest; a human who’d lost this much blood would be woozy, if not unconscious. She still has lust to wring out, and she thinks he’d pleasure her with his hands or his mouth if she asked, but the world doesn’t need him to be more of a giver. Besides, eventually someone’s going to sort through the chaos they left in Albion, and dealing with police or hunters would be a waste of time at best.

“More later?” she asks, and he half-laughs at her and nods. His eyes don’t look so empty now, covered with a shine, and their fire is more a gentle warmth than a devouring star. She’s not sure which burn is going to hurt the worst.

They don’t say much as they redress and regroup. Even if they _could_ say anything to top the experience itself, Sam belongs to the world, not just her, and Ruby belongs to the what he’ll be, not who he is. She doesn’t want to taste the irony of more promises she can’t keep. They focus on mundane details: How much gas is in the truck’s tank, what kind of vehicle should they steal next, can Sam salvage any of his laptop.

By the time they’ve jacked another car in some unincorporated hamlet filled with red _NEBRASKA_ flags, and they’ve turned around to rescue the Impala from wherever it’s been impounded— because drinking demon blood is one thing, but Sam’s not ready to switch cars—, he’s alert and awake, if twitchy, smirking as if he can see his quarry dead-ahead in the road. Even the burned-out fans in his laptop don’t seem to bother him. He’s happy, she thinks, now that he’s decided to accept what he is. Now that he doesn’t have Dean trying to pull his fangs every time he lifts his head. Dean is Heaven’s man, through and through, even if he is in Hell right now.

Eventually, the Righteous Man will return, and Sam’s will have to look at the face of his shame again. They’re still being chased by a more dangerous enemy than Ruby had expected. And she’s not sure what the other hunters have figured out from their dustup with Saffre. She decides that, for the moment, she can be happy with Sam. He’s growing— in power, confidence, presence, self—, and she’s never had more confidence that he’ll do the right thing when he has to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel that Ruby's powers tend to get ignored in fanworks, despite the fact that she canonically teleports into and out of Sam's car, steps onto holy ground, appears to make all of a motel's lights flicker to get Dean's attention, and shuts down the Impala with Dean behind the wheel. Lilith could probably eat her for breakfast (although she prefers babies), and I doubt she'd last long in close combat with Azazel or Abaddon, but I still think she's a grade ahead of your average demon, and capable of causing serious havoc in her surroundings.
> 
> The Futhark (also called Futhork) is the alphabet of pre-Christian and early-medieval Germanic cultures. You can read more about it here:
> 
> https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-viking-age/religion-magic-death-and-rituals/runic-magic/
> 
> "Saffre" is one of many Middle English terms for "sapphire," which I mined here:
> 
> https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam's obsession with Lilith hinders his and Ruby's ability to go after Saffre.

Ruby crushes a nubby excuse for a fry into the salt. She revels in it in a way that probably only another demon could understand. Back when she was newly-demonized, this much salt would’ve hurt like battery acid; before and after her previous trip topside, she was in Hell, where she had no such pleasures as fries and extra salt.

“And that’s why Saffre wants me dead,” she concludes her story.

“Because you helped us,” Sam states.

“That, and I lost her friendship bracelet.”

He shifts his legs, not quite pacing, not quite standing still. “Okay, so… I’m guessing demon assistance. The human coven we met before, I don’t see them traveling much. Too busy using their powers to win their church raffles or whatever.”

“Well, there’s all sorts of covens,” Ruby corrects. “Some just want the powers to make their suburban lives better. Some are pretty hardcore into the magic for its own sake. But I think you’re right. Saffre by herself showing up wouldn’t have caused all those omens, and it would’ve taken more training than your average human witches have to create them artificially. Smart money says she rounded up some old friends. Either that, or Lilith knows a useful stooge when she sees one and decided to loan her a few troops.” That might be true, actually: Lilith _does_ want Sam to get more practice. Ruby drains her Coke. “Out of curiosity, though, what would you do if they were human?”

“Kill them, I guess,” he says. “I mean, it’s us or them, right?”

“What, no heroic Luke Skywalker-on-the-Death-Star attempts to talk them back to the side of good?”

“No. Not if they’re trying to kill me. It doesn’t make me happy, but…”

“It kind of makes you happy?”

He shoots her a glare, and she smiles back. “Don’t you think we have more pressing concerns than my mood when we finish them off?” he demands. “Like _how_ to finish them off?”

“I wasn’t judging you, Sam. Whether or not you volunteered for this gig, you’ve got it now, and you’ll be better if you don’t hate it. Anyway, I think you’ll agree that our first order of business is finding them.”

“Summoning?”

“No point. Saffre’ll be expecting it, and she’ll be warded up the wazoo, so good luck getting her to show. Same deal with any of her current followers. I might be able to get some info out of someone’s rival, except that no one wants to piss off Lilith, and they aren’t taking us seriously as a contender since…”

Sam flinches, but doesn’t protest. What could he say? “They don’t work for Lilith. If any of it was about Lilith’s war against me, there would’ve been someone in place to shoot me when I walked into that trap in Albion, just take me off the board. It’s not like they _need_ magic to kill me. They _wanted_ me to suffer death by magic while you, a witch, watched helplessly from the sidelines.”

Ruby nods. “Not bad. Also, kind of bad. We don’t have a theory that leads to good.”

“Big surprise. What’s the plan?”

“Right now? We rest. I drained my batteries getting out of Albion, so I’m not going to be able to do any of the classic demon acts for a few days. And no, it won’t help if you quit drinking my blood.” It might speed things up, a little, but it isn’t worth the headache his mood swings give her, let alone the risk that one of their enemies might run them to ground and find them helpless. “I have an idea about how to find them, though. I’m not sure if it’ll work, but it’s worth a shot.”

Sam waits a beat. “And?”

  
Ruby’s gone to wash the grease off her hands before she digs into her purse. It probably doesn’t make a difference if she gets hydrogenated fats on items that’ve already been soaked in human blood and pagan magic, but she’s not taking the chance. “Blessed dice. Or, you know, cursed, depending on your point of view.” There aren’t any hand towels proper in the bathroom, so she she dries her hands on the bath towel that Sam had designated for that purpose.

“And… we have those?”

“Are you trying to come out as a witch? Because unless you are, _we_ don’t. _I_ do. Even if you’re going to have to use them,” she huffs. “If there’s a way around Saffre’s warding, these are it: Old and pagan, made long before the old gods lost their power. Saffre came along much later, and I never knew her to show much interest in beings outside the Christian tradition. Brynstan had studied with the German pantheon, a little, but the core of her curriculum was demonology.”

Ruby opens pulls a little bag out of her duffel, and then withdraws a box from the bag. “We’re visiting a crossroads, Sam. Only place we can do this.”

“That sounds like a demon deal.”

“It isn’t, not exactly. It’s the god who gave demons the idea. You want me to show you how it works?”

***

Sam’s stable enough, now, to get in the car without dramatics, and he listens to her with more curiosity than horror. That’s a trait he shares with all the best witches, and he believes, the way she does, in pursuing all kinds of knowledge. Maybe it’s part of what makes him Lucifer’s true vessel. Put Sam or Ruby in the garden of Eden, and either one of them would bite into the fruit of wisdom.

Knowledge is power, and Ruby’s god does not demand weakness of his children.

“Once upon a time,” she begins, as though she were telling a child— because, in a way, she is—, “There lived a witch whose name meant Fearless, who made items of great power that required great delicacy to use. He made many blessed or cursed objects, but, over and over, his apprentices failed to learn their usage. Sometimes nothing happened; sometimes the apprentice would blow himself up, or leach out his life force.

“The witch grew old, hundreds of years old, and tired of waiting for an equal to train. He wanted to die, and he wanted to leave behind something worthy of him— if not an apprentice, then a servitor that carried his magic into the future. So he dug up the bones of a seer and began to cut dice from them. But he could never ensure that their power wouldn’t fade over time, or that they wouldn’t eventually crumble or burn, like bones are prone to doing.

“When he had carved the last pair, and cast spells on it that would ensure it lasted for centuries, he took it to a place where paths crossed, and he summoned a god to make it last even longer. A lot of gods used to visit crossroads, you know, before people forgot the invocations. The crossroads god that Fearless summoned doesn’t even have a name in the modern world. Now, it’s mostly the demons who turn up. Ironic, all that Christianity made demons stronger.

“The crossroads god made Fearless a deal: The witch would feed him his own heart, if the god would power the dice until the god’s own death. The god cut Fearless’s heart from his chest and ate it over the dice, sealing the pact in word and blood. To this day, the dice have never lost their power.”

She leaves out one impressive piece of their provenance: Lilith had them for a while, before giving them to Ruby. Sam won’t look too hard. He’s never demanded that she tell him where she got her knife.

“Don’t you need something of hers to tell them what to look for?” Sam asked.

“Nope. Remember, they’re not powered by a demon, or by whatever currents of power you can suck in from plants or animals. It’s more than a witch’s spell, it’s the servitor of a god. Don’t ask me how it works, because I don’t think anything like it’s been made in the last couple thousand years. Crossroads takes the information he needs from the witch— sorry, _worshipper_— who’s holding the dice. Little catch, though: You have to be human. Technically, demons, Hell holds our title, so our prayers don’t count.”

“Okay, so, how do I read them?”

“They’re simple enough. I don’t think they’ll even give a Winchester too much trouble. You have to roll dice around in your hand a few minutes to get the god’s attention, name the entity you’re seeking, and then throw them. Things may get a little wacky for a moment: Winds coming out of nowhere to blow the dice around, cold spots and voices from the ghosts that surround him. He guards the intersection between the living and dead, too.”

“Yeah. I can tell he’s great at his job.”

“Well, maybe he was, before hunters started killing everyone who sacrificed to him. If you don’t feed a god, he gets weak, too weak to handle the millions of souls that humans keep turning out. The old gods used to skim a little off the top of every soul that believed in them, or at least that was willing to make some kind of meaningful sacrifice to them. But this one can still deliver on his old promise with the dice, because there’s a handful of believers still around. He sometimes collects under the names Legba and Ghede, if you’re wondering.”

Sam looks amused. Still curious, too. “Since when do you care about defending the honor of voodoo gods?”

“Since I sold myself to a demon because it was the only game in town.” She still remembers the bitterness of realizing that, even if she wouldn’t change it, now. God may have created Hell as a place of suffering, but _her_ god turned its fire into a forge, tempered her into a weapon. “Next intersection should be quiet enough.”

It’s never _really_ quiet or dark enough, in the modern world. Cars that Ruby can’t see hum in the background, and the lights of nearby towns choke out the stars on the horizon. Maybe you have go to Hell to appreciate Earth. Most humans sure don’t.

Ruby doesn’t get it, why they let themselves keep overrunning this beautiful gift. They’re weak, weaker than she ever was. Isota had wondered why more of the villagers didn’t drown their babies in buckets, if that kept them from needed to turn the songbirds’ playground into grain fields. She’d take a nightingale’s nest over a nursery of squalling babies any day.

Sam would be horrified. Then again, she horrifies Sam on a regular basis, and he hasn’t left her since she foundthis dead meatsuit. Somewhere inside that oversized skull of his, he knows that the horror is their bond.

“Okay, so, two dice. One of them is marked with signs for ‘east’ and ‘west,’” she says, tapping them with her words to show which sign is which, “and the other is marked with the signs for ‘north’ and ‘south.’ Ghede, or Legba, or whatever he was called back in the day, will guide the dice so that they tell us what direction Saffre is in— due north, northeast, southwest, whatever.”

“There’s a lot of world in those directions.”

“I don’t think they’d even domesticated camels when the dice were made. Not as much ground to cover. But, once we start following omens, track Saffre to her next town, we should be able to use this to get the drop on her. She’ll count on us not knowing which door’s safe to open or when to brace for a fight. Now, practice. Like I said, it’s simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. You have to focus on the person whose name you’re speaking. If you get distracted thinking about Lilith, then we could find ourselves face to face with the wrong demon, and that’ll make Brynstan look like child’s play.”

Sam takes the dice from her. “How will I know if my attention’s focused enough? I mean, do the dice… do something different?”

“Not as far as I know. Search your heart, Sammy. Only you can prevent your mind from wandering. Guess I’m going to have to bet on you doing this right.”

“Saffra,” Sam says, testing, “Sapphire, Saffyr, Saffier… How important is the pronunciation?”

“Well, Sam, like I said, the dice don’t work for me, so I wouldn’t know. Hell, I don’t even know which pronunciation she uses these days. You had it pretty close the first time, but make it more ‘Saffre,’ the way the French pronounce ‘théatre.’”

He graces her with a surprisingly laid-back smile. It’s amazing how much nicer demon blood makes him— when he’s on it all the time, at least. “I took Spanish for my language requirements, but I’ll do my best. ‘Saffer… Saffre… Saffre… That one? Okay.”

The temperature drops suddenly, and a breeze sends ripples through the thick, stagnant air. “Saffre!” Sam calls. He throws the dice at a sharp angle to the pavement.

The wind catches the dice, but they don’t come to a stop. Instead, their rolls turn into a rotation, and that speeds up until they rise a few inches from the ground. Dirt and a couple of fallen leaves join them.

“Who’d’ve guessed, your real superpower is confusion,” says Ruby.

Sam gives her a disgusted look and grabs at the dice. One bounces off his knuckle before he catches it.“Is this because I can’t stop thinking about Lilith?”

“Lilith, me, your high-school sweetheart… You tell me, Sam, who’s distracting you?”

“Yeah, well, no offense, but there’s only one person who’s out to to destroy the world and also killed my brother.” He sighs. “I’m guessing this is why we’re here.”

“Practice makes perfect,” Ruby agrees.A thought occurs to her, and she thinks that she and Sam are enough alike in their methods that it might make sense to him. “If you want to kill Lilith, use it to your advantage. Saffre is a stepping-stone, an obstacle, a guard blocking your path. She’s not a distraction, she’s just the next fight in your quest. Focus on her as that.”

Sam nods and breathes, the motion of his belly slow and rhythmic. Doesn’t the U.S. military teach an in-two-three-four-out technique? Maybe John taught him.

He calls out Saffre’s name and throws the dice again. They wobble for a little longer than normal, but the wisp of cold air eventually guides them to a stop rather than lifting them up.

“Northeast,” Sam says. “We should probably do it again to confirm it’s working.”

Ten more throws yield the same results. “That narrows it down to about a dozen states plus another quarter of the world’s real estate,” he says. “Want to get started in that direction right away?”

“Only if we take turns driving. I’m not kidding, Sam. You need sleep.”

***

A little less than three hours later, the radio announces a bizarre murder and confession in a suburb of Augusta, Maine: A father of three, covered in blood, shouting that a demon made him kill his children. That’s Saffre’s bait, and they’re about to chomp down on it. Ruby has only her faith to convince her they’ll manage to slip off the hook.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gods in the _SPN_verse present a writing challenge, due to the fact that the show both maintains their existence as gods _and_ blurs their religions with other forms of magic. For example, the writers based crossroads demons on Voodoo gods associated with liminal spaces, yet a Voodoo loa, Baron Samedi, appears as a god, rather than a demon, in "Hammer of the Gods."
> 
> My headcanon regarding crossroads demons is that there was once a handful of regional crossroads _gods,_ but that, as they lost power with the advance of monotheism, demons replaced them. (I base this in part on Sam's description of the Old Gods in "Time After Time": "[... T]hey were just short of invincible. But they got a lot of their mojo from worshippers, from people feeding them." ) A modest number of practitioners still worship certain crossroads deities, including Papa Ghede and Papa Legba, so I assume that Ghede and Legba still possess a modest amount of power.
> 
> We can only speculate about how far in the past certain gods, or their prototypes, were worshipped. In the case of most African-derived religions, I lean toward the idea of a few ancient diasporas spreading and diversifying over millennia. One likely source would have been an influx of refugees from the Sahara, which, as the desert spread, would no longer have been able to support its population.
> 
> See:
> 
> http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/voodoo/biglist.htm (list of loa)
> 
> https://www.people.vcu.edu/~wchan/poco/624/harris_south/Obeah%20and%20Myal.htm (description of two other Afro-Caribbean religions)
> 
> http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~tcrndfu/articles/McDonaldVernetFullerWoodhouse.pdf (about the excavation of Dhar Néma, an Iron Age town in what is now Mauritania)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruby gets the upper hand on Saffre, but not everyone in the coven has the same mistress.

It’s too bad that Ruby can’t tell Sam about her real endgame, because Hallowell, Maine, would be a fucking good point in its favor. If God won’t save the world from self-proclaimed environmental stewards who think that urban sprawl is a grotesque disease everywhere but their town, then the devil should. Hell, even the demons who want to raze the planet would erect better monuments to their achievement than another grid of boxy white houses.

Sam, of course, wouldn’t admit to understanding. But she thinks that, deep down, he’d have to argue with himself about it. The vessel of her lord isn’t an idiot, he’s just young and only beginning to learn that you don’t get freebies from prioritization, not when you want to succeed at something. The simplest lessons are often the most painful.

_I should write a book,_ thinks Ruby. _Ten Steps to a More Demonic You._ Of course, Isota could probably have written the same advice when she was human, but then, she’d never been quite like the humans around her. Now, Ruby’s not quite like the other demons.

Sam’s never belonged to his people, either, and he’s (slowly, _slowly_) starting to accept that that’s okay. If he were still completely dedicated to some human ideal, he would never have tried re-opening that burnt-out Hellgate to save a ghost. He wouldn’t be sitting beside her in a rented beige sedan, his face focused but calm, confident in the strength her blood gives him.

He turns the keys to _off_ and faces her with an expression that manages to be both amiable and predatory. It’s okay: The real teeth in it aren’t for her. He’d rather be a pack hunter than a lone wolf, and he’s treating her as his partner, not his prey.

After walking into the trap last time, they’re sticking within rescue range of each other. It’d be nice if that was a little farther, so that they wouldn’t both _need_ rescuing at the same time, but the Kennebec County jail’s too cramped, with too many walls, and Ruby can’t maintain her line of sight on Sam from more than a few feet away.

So they go in together, Special Agent Robert Campbell— a tribute, she supposes, to both Bobby Singer and the family that died because of Sam— and Special Agent Trainee Ruby DeWitt. Ruby wonders if Sam’s trying to tell her something about her own biting sense of humor, or if the name’s just another tribute to someone she’s never met.

Ruby doesn’t have particularly high hopes for their interview with the former host: Joseph Marchman, 35, dentist, occasionally attends an Episcopalian holiday service, cited for underage drinking in college, no-fault divorce from his wife three years ago. The only obvious pre-possession common denominator with the other hosts is access to kids. But Marchman at least knows that he _was_ possessed, government psychiatrists be damned, and Sam hopes that means he remembers something about his possessor’s plans.

“Ruby,” Marchman breathes, the second Sam gives him their names. “You’re— no, no— it was looking for a Ruby.” He tries to curl into a ball, but his chains won’t let him. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re one of them! _You’re one of them!”_

Sam cuts his eyes toward Ruby before turning back to Marchman. “Look, you know what? You’re right, she’s a spirit too, but she’s not one of the ones behind this. There’s a war between spirits, and that’s why they’re looking for her. And we need to know why the demon that killed your family chose you. It’s done this, over and over, possess someone, murder their families, and it’ll do it again, if we don’t stop it. Please, do you remember anything that would help us figure out how it chooses its victims?”

Marchman hangs his head. “No. I don’t know. It didn’t care about me. It enjoyed it, but who it was in didn’t matter. But I do remember something. It was trying to draw you in. Draw her in. And it’s— experimenting. If it doesn’t succeed perfectly, it’ll… change how it works and try again.” The man shuts his eyes, his face blank.

Sam hesitates. “Mr. Marchman, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But I need you to think a little more about it, so that we can stop it from happening again. Do you know anything about who it was working with?”

“They were… I think they were like it,” Marchman whispers. “Just… demons that came in and took whoever they wanted. I don’t know where they are now. There were five of them. I think. Five. I could hear them— it could hear them— even when they weren’t here. They were chanting, Latin, I think, and something else. Maybe— maybe— German.”

That’s Ruby’s cue to share a Look with Sam. If she were Dean, it’d no doubt turn into a ten-minute staring standoff with over twenty years of brotherly angst baked into it. Mercifully, she’s a demon, and Sam doesn’t expect more than a perfunctory glance before they get back to work.

Well, to his work. She’s always watching Sam.

“Do you remember anything else it was thinking?” Sam asks. “A plan, maybe, or even a particularly strong image?”

“Dead,” Marchman answers. “Dead children. My children. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead…”

Ruby could exchange another Look with Sam, this time admitting defeat in the face of the crazy, but she’s not a Winchester, and she’d rather have results than drama. Besides, they’re running out of time if they want to stop Saffre in Hallowell, or even to survive their trip here. So she jumps out of this body and into Marchman— his body, his mind. When her human senses come back, filtered this time through Marchman’s, the lights are flickering, the air reeks of sulfur, and Sam, predictably, is looking conflicted about her new plan.

“Ruby?” he asks.

It takes her a couple of tries to make this host’s tongue work right. “It’s me. And some guy who I’m pretty sure has never been special in any way to any demon. If we’re relying on figuring out Saffre’s pattern, we’re screwed. It’s got to be random.”

“Okay. Does he, um, remember anything?”

“Yeah, a garbled mess on top of suburban boredom. It’s like someone let Salvador Dali redecorate a golf course.” Sam twitches at that, and she knows he’s debating whether or not to scold her for her insensitivity, but he probably won’t. After all, he’s not the one getting the intel.

She thinks about comforting Sam, saying that it’s okay, she’s not hurting the host. It’d be true, in a way: She isn’t leaving any injuries, and she’s put Marcham mostly to sleep while she probes his memories. The man’s suffering less than he was before she entered him. But she and Sam both know, too, that there’s no way her reassurances wouldn’t be false, that, like a wound on a numbed limb, lost control is damage enough without pain. Besides, she’s supposed to be sharpening Sam’s hard edges, not enabling his softness.

Demons don’t leave their secret plans lying about willy-nilly; all Ruby can find in Marcham’s mind is his own impressions of the time he spent housing a demon, and he wasn’t awake for most of it. She observes through Marcham’s senses as his hands kill his children on the fake altar _(boring; Saffre gets her usual big fat zero for style)_; she listens for any chanting there, but doesn’t hear it. She thinks back farther, to when he first saw the smoke (apparently, Saffre still hasn’t learned how to hide herself when approaching a host, which amuses Ruby, but isn’t immediately useful). Sometime between the two events, Marcham heard snippets of chanting in at least three languages, and saw a space of floor decorated for real spellwork. Summonings and bindings, Ruby thinks, with curses on her and Sam thrown in. Unfamiliar scraps of cloth and hair, and dirty bandages that might’ve been snatched out of her and Sam’s motel rooms, litter the black cloth. There’s part of a rant about Ruby being a traitor to demonkind; a delectable bite of fish served with white wine; and the true and host faces of the other five demons. Three of them go way back with Saffre, but the other two are fair-to-middling soldier types who put in some time under Azazel’s command. Azazel means Lilith, and that means Lilith _wants_ this to happen, that there’s some lesson here for Ruby to impart to Sam.

There’s nothing else of interest in Marcham’s mind— Ruby’s seen enough bad teeth, thanks—, so she returns to her own body, and Marcham’s head hits the interrogation table hard enough to bruise. Sam checks his pulse.

“He was right about the voices,” Ruby says. “Five of them, roughly equidistant from him, which I’m guessing means that Saffre herself took him. Three languages: Latin, Old English, and Hebrew. They’re summoning someone. I can’t tell who. And I think they’re still trying to curse us, if you had any doubt.” She looks around. “I recognized the five demons, so at least we know who we’re dealing with. Two more from one of Brynstan’s old coven, a housewife who sold her soul to Saffre back in around 1600, and a couple that must be on loan from Lilith. You ready to go?”

“Find a crossroads?” Small but regular doses of Ruby’s blood have greatly improved Sam’s temper. They haven’t done much to quell his long-term thirst for revenge.

“Unless you know somewhere else to use my voodoo dice.” She can hear the bite in her own voice, although she’s not sure why it's there; Sam’s sincere and focused, and he’s already doing what she needs him to do.

Sam doesn’t react, anyway. “Well, we’ve got a couple of options. We can leave town and find a crossroads isolated enough that no one will notice us playing dice there, but, if we’ve already been made, there’ll be more time for Saffre to hear about us. Or, we can stay close and someone will probably see us playing with our… voodoo dice, but there’ll be less time for Saffre to plan for us showing up in the first place.”

“Plan B,” Ruby says, without hesitation. “If she can get an immediate report on two weirdoes playing with dice at an intersection, then she’s probably already getting the word on two people who match our description. We do this as quick as possible, the first place we won’t get run over at this time of day.”

***

The dice narrow down the search to a subdivision, but it isn’t like Sam and Ruby can keep stopping to focus on the dice while they advance on Saffre’s hideout. Nor can they feel comfortable about the fact that this is the same subdivision where the dentist killed his family.

Sam breaks his silence. “You think they’ve gone back to the dentist’s house, or they’re just keeping an eye on it?”

“Let’s assume both. We have to go in if we want to check it out, but we can’t come back out again unless we’re ready to face more demons.” She hesitates. “There’s another option. We could wait to go in until Saffre tries another spell. I can’t feel _her,_ past her warding, but I’ll be able to sense that _someone’s_ calling on the powers of darkness. That way, we’d at least be trapped in the right place, but…”

“… Saffre would have had a lot more time to plan for us being here.”

“One for the Winchester.”

He sighs. “I say we go in now. If they’re gonna catch us, at least I’m used to getting caught trespassing on crime scenes.”

Ruby wonders how much of his opinion is based in tactical sense, and how much in his instinct to crush everyone who stands between him and Lilith. But if she wasn’t willing to follow his lead, she shouldn’t have nudged him to take it. Trespassing and bravado it is.

It’s the sort of bland, tiny-porched white house that looks naked without a picket fence. Anything of interest has been manicured out of the lawn; the plastic playhouse came out of a box. Saffre didn’t ruin much when she stole the dentist.

Ruby debates telling Sam that, to test his mood and also because, human memories or no, she’s demon enough that she has to torment him a _little_ bit. She gets distracted by the sense of something out of place, something cold, even if she hasn’t yet touched it.

She grabs Sam as he climbs the porch steps. Well, _step._

“There’s something here,” she says. “You can’t feel it yet, but I can. Not demons. Ghosts, maybe.”

Sam hesitates. “So, what, you think the children…? It’s way too early for them to have manifested naturally. That’s got to be what they were summoni—.”

The temperature drops about fifteen degrees in a half-second, and a little girl, maybe six years old, steps through the closed door, grabs Sam’s wrist, and flings him against the wood, hard enough to knock out one of the glass panes at the top. If any or the real neighbors are watching, then maybe the visual absurdity will distract them from calling the police.

The ghost disappears, but its attack isn’t over. Sam’s still stuck to the door, and its hinges are rattling as the spirits try to suck him in.

He really should’ve taken her up on training to fight things other than demons.

It’s not like Sam will let them start shooting rock salt in residential Hallowell, because God forbid that some dumbass civvy who can’t mind their own business get drawn in and die. Ruby risks reaching out with her mind, pushing the ghost away with her own power; the cold disappears and Sam collapses, but it won’t work for long, not if all three of the children are after them.

Sam doesn’t even bother to stand all the way up before he rushes back down the porch, shivering. “Iron,” he gets out, heading for the car. “In the trunk.”

“Yeah… Sam?” Ruby says. She can see the children advancing, surrounding them, even if they’ve gone invisible to Sam. “I don’t think they’re gonna just let us leave.”

The ghosts are enough to make her wish she were fighting the demons directly. Normally, they wouldn’t pose much of a threat; spirits in the veil can be strong, but they seldom know how to wield that strength, and just manifesting on our plane of existence drains their batteries some. They tend to be big on dramatic flailing, less on lethal precision. Unfortunately, _these_ ghosts are firmly anchored on the wrong side of the veil by black magic, they know who their targets are, and Saffre won’t let them give up until they give out.

Ruby can’t come up with a quick way to counter Saffre’s ensorcellment of the ghosts, so she tries to use it to her advantage. After all, Saffre didn’t wake them up playing “Taps”: She had to be stirring up rage. Unyielding, irrational rage, the sort that demanded redress even of those who had committed no wrongs.

Sad as it sounds, Ruby’s got no better idea than to talk to them. If she can’t change their targets, maybe she can shift which of their targets is top priority.

“Look, you snot-nosed diaper-fillers,” she snaps, “You notice anything different between him and me? Sort of like the difference between your real daddy and that thing that was wearing him like a dollar-store Halloween mask. Yeah. That’s right. Sammy’s just here to help.” It’s working, so she keeps talking, stepping farther away from Sam as she does. “But me? I’ve killed kids like you. I’ve killed them in worse ways than you can imagine, and I’ve pulled out their steaming, smelly guts to tell my fortune. More fun than the daily horoscope in the _Whitebread Times._ I was so just disappointed that I didn’t get here in time to peel your greasy, talc-y skin off your fat, drooling faces.”

She and Sam make a good team, even if he doesn’t know which side they’re playing for. He’s figured out what she’s doing and made a dash for the trunk of the car, and Ruby knows he’s getting something to help her, because he cares, even when she can’t doesn’t know if he should. She hears his phone ring, a jangling sound against the whispers of the ghosts and the creaking of the battered house.

Sulfur taints the air, and Ruby feels arms gripping her with inhuman strength. It’s Saffre, wearing a soccer mom wearing a stupid pink apron.

“Hello, Ruby,” she says. “Brynstan’s stupid little paste gem. Sam. Now, I know you want to send me back to Hell, but you should know that I have demons in every house adjacent to this lot, and they have guns, so, unless you have a demon-exorcising pistol hidden in all that plaid, there’s a real risk that you’ll lose tha—“ Saffre’s breath falters, and she looks down at her belly, where, Ruby knows, a devil’s trap is spreading across her skin. By the road, Sam’s dived into the backseat. That’s good: He stands a chance of being able to focus and bring down at least one of the other demons if he’s not taking bullets.

Ruby gives Saffre a push and pins her to the ground. The ghosts are advancing again, but they don’t understand being pointed at their mistress.

“Funny how the trap’s never for the person you think it’s for,” Ruby comments. She pitches her voice louder for their apparent audience; after it’s not like demons are news to them. “The hex bag’s on me, so don’t waste time searching yourself. Now, you can let me take Sam Winchester and walk out of range of bags and guns, or you can hope that your copycat coven will be able to find, remove, and burn the bag before it finishes eating through your Norman-era wards.” Ruby digs a round, cross-holding talisman out of Saffre’s jeans. It’s familiar-looking, although she can’t be sure it’s a decoy until the ghosts vanish from the yard. “You got a preference?”

Ruby doesn’t see which of the demons Sam gets, but he must’ve gotten one, because she knows when most of its fellow coven members feel it and smoke out to save themselves. Whatever magic they were using to power up Saffre, it relied on strength in numbers; weakened, Saffre writhes, shrieking. The remaining snipers— two, probably Lilith’s; of course Sam’s the real prize for them— open fire on Sam, who Ruby hopes managed to fit onto the floorboard with three weeks’ worth of laundry between him and the shattering glass. One bullet punches through the metal door, but it’s followed by a faint thump near the window that the shooter was aiming from, so Sam’s still in the game.

The demon who didn’t fire steps out onto his front porch. His meatsuit’s some idiot in a pinstriped suit topped off with Danny Trejo facial hair.

“Tell Sam to check his voicemail,” the demon says, right before he smokes the hell out of Dodge.

Saffre is still collapsed on the ground, twitching in pain. Ruby doesn’t know if Sam will come up with some dumbass idea to exorcize Saffre instead of killing her— the needle in his moral compass spins like a pinwheel—, so she stabs Saffre through the chest before he gets the chance. The orange crackle’ makes Ruby’s hands tingle.

Sam, meanwhile, is standing up, dazed and powerful and so transparently scared of himself for being strong enough to win.

“Get down!” Ruby shouts. “Just because there were only four demons assigned as snipers doesn’t mean there were only four willing to shoot you.”

“No… They’re gone. I can feel it.” Maybe he _will_ be handling demons in batches by the time his brother’s back. It’ll be an interesting day for audience participation. “I could _feel them.”_

Ruby holds out her hands for the car keys. Sam’s a good driver, but he can’t keep driving if they fall into another sniper trap.

“Sounds like progress,” she says.

“Yeah, I guess.” He looks like his head hurts. Not enough to keep him from sulking, though. “Ruby, you just knifed that woman in the chest. What’s the point of doing what I’m doing if I can’t save anyone?”

She gives him her most sarcastic look. The sun’s shining brightly on the pretty green trees behind him, and he’s slumped toward the center of the car to spare his eyes from the light. He uses one of his plaid sleeves to swipe halfheartedly at the dark blood seeping from his nose. Maybe it was supposed to make his face look cleaner, but it looks sadder instead.

She stops before asking him if he _really_ needs her to answer his question. She can already see the answer all over his face. Deep down, he knows his mission isn’t about who he can’t save now; it’s about who he couldn’t save before.

“The last minion standing said to check your voicemail,” says Ruby. He was Lilith’s, not Saffre’s; he’s working with Ruby, whether or not he knows it, and that means she probably wants Sam to hear the message.

“Why?” Sam grumbles. “So he can tell us all about the possible ways he plans to kill us?”

“Maybe. If he is, I’d kind of like to know what they are.”

Sam concedes the point by flipping open the phone. It beeps before the voicemail plays.

“Hello, Winchester,” a voice purrs. “If you’re listening to this, then you must’ve won this round. Congratulations. It’s time for us to go to Plan B. Every time you go after a demon, any demon, one of us will slit some innocent person’s throat. ‘Less, of course, that demon’s your whore. Your domestic issues aren't my problem.” The phone beeps again when the message ends.

Well, now Ruby knows what the test is. She doesn’t think Sam will fail. But when she looks at the grim expression breaking out from behind the weariness on his face, she wonders how hard it’ll be to watch him succeed.

**Author's Note:**

> It's difficult to support one time and place for Ruby's human life over any of several others. Since she originally gained her powers as a witch from "Tammi," and Tammi's modern-day coven seems to line up with European ideas about witchcraft, I placed her in Europe. Making her English was simply a convenience for purposes of research, as English is my native language. "Back when the plague was big" could reasonably mean the late Neolithic or the early 20th century. Scientists have found Yersinia pestis in European graves as old as approximately c. 3,000 BCE, and a plague epidemic killed up to 40,000 people in 1720s Marseilles. See:
> 
> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181206120035.htm
> 
> https://www.britannica.com/science/plague/History
> 
> I settled on the medieval-Renaissance period for a couple of reasons. First, given how many enemies our girl has, I think that she predates modern record-keeping, or someone would find and burn her bones. Second, if she were truly ancient, then she'd probably have more of a reputation as a high-level player. Her gambits frequently rely on other demons underestimating her, which wouldn't work if she'd been outplaying them for thousands of years.
> 
> While we don't know that much about demon culture(s), "Ruby" appears to be her real name, not that of a host: The demon inhabiting Tammi immediately calls her by name in "Malleus Maleficarum," despite not having seen her since Ruby escaped Hell. However, the given name Ruby was rare to nonexistent prior to the Victorian era, so it probably wasn't her human name. I imagine that many demons either take or receive names to mark their initiation into the supernatural: After all, Crowley was born Fergus Macleod.
> 
> According to the Society for Creative Anachronism, the feminine name Isota exists in English records from 1327 and 1379; the variations Isata and Isott were used in 1459 and 1576, respectively. The continuous usage of the basic name in such similar forms made it a safe choice for Ruby's human name. See:
> 
> http://heraldry.sca.org/names/reaneyintro.html
> 
> Since we never learn Tammi's real name from the show, and since she (or he, or they-- do demons even have genders when they're not possessing a host?) is such a pivotal figure in Ruby's past, I felt a need to name her. I assumed that she, like Ruby and Crowley, has a true name, chosen by herself or or one of her superiors. "Brynstan" means "brimstone" in Late Old English, and its use implies that she's returned to haunt her old stomping grounds, 2-4 centuries after her death.


End file.
